Video - Turkish police oust Taksim protesters with tear gas as Obama's BFF Erdogan cheers removal of ‘rags’.

Video - Turkish police oust Taksim protesters with tear gas as Obama's BFF Erdogan cheers removal of ‘rags’.(RT).Hundreds of Turkish police clashed with protesters after taking over Taksim Square in Istanbul. The raid allowed removal of barricades and banners. PM Erdogan praised the troops for removing the ‘rags’ as he branded the revolutionary symbols. Hundreds of security troops have arrived at the scene early morning. The square itself was mostly empty of protesters at the time.

The few protesters present at the square when police arrived were quickly dispersed with tear gas, eyewitnesses report. They retreated to neighboring areas and are launching sporadic assaults at police forces, being beaten back each time.

While the square itself saw relatively low level of violence during the first hours of the operation, the surrounding streets have become a place of serious confrontation, RT’s crew reports from the scene.

“There are serious clashes in the small streets surrounding the square. They are running after each other tossing stones, bottles and smoke grenades there. It’s a real meat grinder in there,” reports RT’s Ashraf El Sabbagh. At the square, some of the police have dismantled barricades which protesters erected over the days of action. They have also taken down protest banners from the buildings surrounding the square.

Others were using water cannons to scatter the protesters trying to retake the square. The activists threw firebombs and fireworks at the armored police trucks.

One of the trucks with water cannon mounted on it caught fire after a Molotov cocktail hit it, but another one doused the flame.

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday following the raid on Taksim Square, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for national unity. The conciliatory tone of the first part of the speech contrasted the sharp criticism of the protesters and the hardline stance that the Turkish leader demonstrated in the earlier days of the protest.

Erdogan’s speech went harsher later, as he went on to separate the peaceful protesters at Gezi Park from the violent “mobs”, whom he blamed of causing public disturbances, damaging property, injuring police officers and scaring off international investors. "95 per cent of the protesters in Taksim did not know" the location of the Gezi Park before the protest started, he claimed. He also lashed out at what he called misinformation spread across the social media and all the way to the reports of the international media.

"If my reaction is considered too tough, then I'm sorry. I am Tayyip Erdogan, and I can't change that," the prime minister told MPs from his ruling AKP party. Read the full story here.